On an Aurélie Pétrel's proposal, the Galerie Houg invits the artists Jérôme Allavena, Aurélie Pétrel and Marjolijn de Wit to the early summer 2015 exhibition. Drawing for Allavena, photography for Pétrel and painting for de Wit, from their own media artworks to the crossover of their own practices, those three artists will turned the gallery space in to a platform dialogue during this exhbition period.

Jérôme Allavena (FR-1979)

“Consider the two principal aspects of drawing today. The first is the conceptual, theoretical discourse of rawing ... All can be seen as a form of drawing ... This is partly due to the attraction of drawing’s tautologous nature — drawing forever describes its own making in its becoming. In a sense, drawing is nothing more than that, and in its eternal incompletness always re-enacts imperfection. Then there is the other .... aspect of drawing ...[based] on the areas of human experience that drawing has come to be associated with: intimacy, informality, authenticity ..., immediacy, subjectivity, history, memory, narrative ... Drawing is a feeling, an attitude that is betrayed in its handling as much as in the materials used.” - Emma Dexter, Vitamine D, Introduction

Always built on the same way, vehicle and character, the series Knot of Jerome Allavena begins as an ordinary story. A man is hit by a truck, an old lady cries in front of a backhoe, a woman comes out of her car to go shopping while another one hitchhikes...

A narrative is in place. The viewer is led to imagine the scene, a road, a parking, a mall... the actions that take place or took place and the feelings associated with them, discontent, waiting, despite ...

Time seems frozen. Yet the «story» is not built by Jerome Allavena in a common way. In the form of a genealogic tree, the first two drawings merge to create a third. They are no longer fixed, clear or unexpected, a crash occurred. The lines give way to leave room for future abstraction and form a knot. Close to a scientific world, the artist adds new values that fraction and interpolate reality to create an intermediate character between reality and fiction. The shape of the vehicle or person is sometimes found in this inbetween.

Jerome Allavena presents within his drawings their principle of construction. The demonstration, very important in his work, allows to operate by going back and forth between the representation and the genesis of the drawing, abstraction. «Undermined,» it is experienced by the artist in a endless principle.

Romain Salomon

Aurélie Pétrel (FR-1980)

The notion of photographic partition refers to a double meaning of the word «partition». The first refers to the musical composition and its rating system which can rely on readings and interpretations; the second, more specific, is the split, sharing, redistribution (territories for example). From this semantic ambivalence, the concept of photographic partition can be formed simultaneously notation (reserve) and redistribution (not more space but time).

The «Prises de vue» (Shooting / Taking pictures) are for Aurélie Pétrel «zero degree» of the process of appearance of the images indexed dynamics on the partition idea. They are the embryonic phase of an operation (potential) development, a «taking» literal, both concrete sampling and call a becoming (called an appeal taken before a projection, a jump in at come over). A first time before the images, where, previously, the images can be taken (such as in ice, latent). This is what initially containing images power of appearance will be in the exhibition, redistributed, shared in and in a given context, and become secondary time, not just straight, but compound (marked) of double time for transformation. In other words score (Time 1) is played (Time 2) and his playing is marked by doubling its origin and its presentation. The partition function, can be played again replayed so and represent these (its) simultaneous temporalities.

Marjolijn de Wit (NL-1979)

Every decision is a form of destruction. Every choice makes another impossible. It’s a fascinating but disturbing aspect of urban planning; by choosing, a lot is not chosen. Whether or not a road is built or a forest is planted is a matter of great consequence for the type of life that can be found in an area.

From the start of her career, Marjolijn de Wit has been engaged in visualizing the complex relationship between man and nature. Or more specifically, the one-sided nature of this relationship: that man wants to have his way, make it to his image. The clash between nature and cultivation is one of De Wit’s most striking themes. In her earlier work a bringing together of incompatible elements evoked this clash: for example a group of aboriginals who come canoeing into an office space or a picnic in the forest where the food had been arranged with military precision. Televisions, arranged around the picnic cloth show images of nature, on one a dolphin breaks free through the screen.

In the older work there was a great amount of tension between the stillness of an orderly painted plain and . That de Wit often used images of cages and rifles was notable in the sense that they are symbolic for ways man often tries to gain control over nature. In line with these are the later works involving genetic manipulation: humanity’s transcending accomplishment in it’s fight for control.

Marjolijn de Wit’s work still testifies a substantial engagement with society in which formerly named issues are pressed upon. Still there have been the necessary changes. De Wit’s work has never been based purely on humanity’s quest for control of nature. From the beginning, De Wit’s fascination has not only been for the moral side of compulsive cultivation, but also for the aesthetics. Instead of a thematic approach she now works at the idea through thought experiments: what would such a world look like? De Wit looks for the interface of culture and nature, the intriguing no-man’s land that exists through the raffled edges of urban planning. At the same time she touches on the history of abstract art – Mondriaan, who liked to sit with his back to nature. This bears a lively new visual language. Still engaged, the work is more subtle and complex. Also more unsettling; the images of a world between order and chaos, the remnants of the left over space between drawing table visions and organic growth; the uncultivated property between formative, imaginative capacity and the capricious, uncontrollable compulsion for life.

The gallery will be closed from the 8th to the 15th of August.